Team
Charis Community Housing employs a team of talented, passionate individuals. Learn more about our friendly staff.
Jim Wehner
Executive Director
Jim joined the Charis team in September 2008, bringing a balance of ministry experience and business skills to the table. Jim spent nine years as the lead pastor of Common Ground Fellowship, a participating member of the Evangelical Free Church of America. Prior to pastoring, he was a retail manager and spent almost ten years working for Recreational Equipment Incorporated (REI). Jim is married to Jolyn (23 years!) and they have four children. The Wehners have lived in the Atlanta area since 1995 and currently live in Acworth.
Cynthia Fuller
Director of Operations
Originally from Houston, TX, Cynthia has lived in Atlanta for the past 12 years and has worked for Chris since 2007. She enjoys the day-to-day challenges of her role as Director of Operations, overseeing the company’s finances and managing commercial and residential properties. Cynthia maintains extensive relationships with various vendors and contractors. She also oversees the Maintenance Superintendent, who provides service to 21 rental units, a 65-room apartment building and 3 large commercial buildings. Her role has taught her a lot about herself and has grown her ability to adapt to the changes people face in urban communities.
She is happily married to her husband Donyel, and they have 2 beautiful children, Ki’ara (14) and Darius (4). She previously served in the U.S. Army for 8 years. In her free time, Cynthia enjoys cooking, interior design, gardening and dancing. She is actively taking and enjoying kickboxing lessons.
Angela Smith
Housing + Program Manager
Angela grew up in a marginalized community of Peoria, IL and is currently a resident of the transitioning urban neighborhood of South Atlanta. She proudly considers herself a Georgia Peach. The first of seven children, Angela understood from an early age the challenges of having a large family and limited resources. Moving from neighborhood to neighborhood ignited a passion in her heart to see stable, affordable housing in mixed-income communities.
In 1999, Angela relocated to Georgia and was introduced to a Volunteer Program called East Lake Strategic Neighbors. As she listened to Dr. Bob Lupton speak of this great vision of lives being changed and communities transformed, something insider her began to come alive. In 2006, Angela accepted a position with Charis Community Housing as a Program Manager. In this role she assumes several responsibilities, such as Certified Housing Counselor, Loan Underwriter, Volunteer Coordinator, and Family Service Manager.
In her spare time, Angela loves hanging out with friends, reading books, making music, sharing testimonies, singing praises, dancing to the beat of her own drum, and going to Piedmont Park with her dog Sam.
Christy (Norwood) Taylor
Assistant Director of Community Development
Christy (Norwood) Taylor grew up as an Army BRAT, moving every 1½ years. The summer of her 8th grade year, she went on a missions trip to urban Atlanta where she and her youth group stayed in the Carver Homes Projects and volunteered around the city. It was on this trip that she met a toddler whose tear-filled eyes left a memory that ignited Christy’s heart with a passion and love for urban neighbors. During high school in Mobile, Alabama, she volunteered with a city ministry before choosing to study urban community development at Covenant College in Chattanooga, Tennessee. After graduation, she met Dr. Bob Lupton and agreed to join Charis Community Housing to help start its community development. After raising support for six months, she joined Charis in November 2003. She now resides in South Atlanta, a short 30-second walk from the property on which the Carver Homes Projects once stood. God has brought her full-circle and finally given her a place to call home and to plant some roots. Christy married her best friend – Jeremy Taylor – on November 12, 2011.
Jon Spencer
GlenCastle Chaplain
Jonathan Spencer works as a chaplain at the GlenCastle apartments on a part-time basis. An ordained Baptist minister, Jon has served as a pastor in Baltimore, Maryland and here in Atlanta at Druid Hills Baptist Church. He is the son of missionary parents, having grown up on the island of Okinawa, now part of Japan. He has also served in urban ministry in Harlem, NYC and Charlotte, North Carolina. He is married to Sarah Hamm Spencer and is the father of two sons, Cameron (16), Caleb (9) and one daughter, Lily (12). Jon also works as a chaplain for Crossroads Hospice.
John Leonard
GlenCastle Property Manager
John Leonard was born in East Orange, New Jersey. Currently he lives with his in Snellville Georgia, working , playing, and living life on life’s terms. He loves being a father and grandfather.
John plays a crucial role as GlenCastle Property Manager showing up on the premise at all times of day and night. According to John, “You have to work diligently at getting bored on this job. There always is something to do when managing a housing facility. And if you do even the slightlest bit of ministry it will take up half your day, because the stories in here are incredible.”
Drew Swope
Community Organizing Intern
Drew Swope moved to Atlanta from Brooklyn less than a year ago in anticipation of going back to school at Georgia Tech for City and Regional Planning. Interested in community development, he reached out to Christy Norwood to learn more about the work she does. He left the meeting impressed with her and FCS as a whole and soon inquired about an internship possibility. Now, as one of Charis’ community organizers, Drew works towards engaging the community to participate in civic life and general neighborliness.
Bob Lupton
Founder & President, FCS Urban Ministries
Bob Lupton has invested the past 36 years of his life in inner-city Atlanta. In response to a call that he first felt while serving in Vietnam, he left a budding business career to work with delinquent urban youth. Bob and his family sold their suburban home and moved into the city where they have lived and served as neighbors among those in need. His life’s work has been the rebuilding of urban neighborhoods where families can flourish and children can grow into healthy adults.
Bob is a Christian community developer, an entrepreneur who brings together communities of resource with communities of need. Through FCS Urban Ministries (a non-profit organization he founded), he has developed three mixed-income subdivisions, organized two multi-racial congregations, started a number of businesses, created housing for hundreds of families, and initiated a wide range of human services in his community. He is the author of four books (Theirs is the Kingdom, Return Flight, Renewing the City, and Compassion, Justice and the Christian Life) and the widely circulated Urban Perspectives: Reflections on the Gospel, Grace and the City. Bob has a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Georgia. He serves as a speaker, strategist and inspirer with those who seek to establish God’s Shalom in the city.
Board of Directors
William Mitchell Jr., Chairman
Carter and Associates
Bob Lupton, Founder/President
President, FCS Urban Ministries
Cindy Pfeifer, Treasurer
The Lane Company
Malcolm Young, Secretary
Smith, Gambrell and Russell, LLP
Cynthia Trent, Esq.
Lawyers Title & Commonwealth
Chris Gray, Vice President
Imagine Wesley Schools
Jim Wehner
Charis Executive Director
Adam Allman
Regent Partners
Allen Bell
Atlanta Resource Foundation
John Chambliss
Anthem Capital Partners
Ray Christman
Livable Communities Coalition
Chris Dillon
Sapient
